


Its Loveliness Increases

by TheDragonofHouseMormont



Series: The Stars of Leo [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: I am absolute trash for this theory, Post-Episode: s09e12 Hell Bent, bits of angst here and there, pretty fluffy overall I'd say
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-21
Updated: 2016-02-21
Packaged: 2018-05-22 08:36:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6072444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDragonofHouseMormont/pseuds/TheDragonofHouseMormont
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“There is so much love and wonder in this world, you need two hearts to hold it all.”</p>
<p>Another fic for the beautiful theory that Leo Fitz is the son of the Doctor and Clara.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Its Loveliness Increases

Leo has two hearts.  He knows this because his mother often holds him, her fingers tapping on his body in time with his rapid heartbeat.  Then she’ll take his hands in hers, pressing his palms flat to his chest so he can feel the independent hearts beating himself.  “Most people on Earth have one heart,” she tells him.  “But you have two.  Do you know why that is?”

He knows, he’s heard her tell this story many times before, but he likes the way she says it, so he shakes his head.  “There is so much love and wonder in this world,” she says.  “You need two hearts to hold it all.”

His father has two hearts as well.  He can hear them when they hug.  But whenever his mother holds him, his ear pressed against her chest, he doesn’t hear anything at all.  He finally asks her about it when he is still quite young.

“Something happened,” she admits.  “And now my heart sits still and silent.  It makes the whole world sound different.  Even after all this time, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to hearing the universe without the constant thump of my heart in the background.”  A smile spreads over her face.  “Except for when your father speaks, he always sounds just right.”

“Maybe that’s why he has two hearts,” Leo offers.  “He has your heartbeat and he’s keeping it safe, so whenever he speaks you can hear it and everything is okay.”

Her smile is tinged with sadness as she looks down at him.  “Perhaps.”

And it is then that he understands why she always tells him the story about why he has two hearts.  It isn’t meant to be sweet or make him feel special, it’s a lesson he needs to learn, to prepare him for something.  But he doesn’t know what he needs to prepare for.

***

_Seven Years Old_

“His arm is broken in two places,” Dr. Jones says from where she’s standing next to the scan that she’s reading.  “May I ask how it happened?”

Clara can see the way the woman suspects her of negligence.  Like she would risk taking him on an adventure, but truthfully, she hasn’t been on a real adventure in years.  “You have to climb a ladder into the Architectural Reconfiguration System room.  He fell.”

“Why was he going in there?”

“He likes to look through it, try to figure out how it works.  I think the Tardis is trying to teach him.”  Clara smiles in pride at her son’s intelligence and curiosity.

Dr. Jones surprisingly returns her smile.  The Doctor’s standing in the corner, watching anxiously as the scene unfolds in front of him.  “We haven’t been properly introduced,” the woman says, holding out her hand.  “I’m Martha.”

Clara accepts the offered hand.  “Clara.  And this, of course,” she gestures toward her son.  “Is Leo.”

Martha and her husband Mickey arrived unexpectedly half an hour ago in the Doctor’s Tardis.  Clara had been wondering why they were needed at all; between the Doctor’s knowledge and both their Tardises, they should have easily been able to come up with a solution to their son’s injuries, but now she understands why they’re here.  This is an opportunity for Leo to receive the attentions of a medical doctor who not only has a chance at understanding his alien biology, but also won’t treat him as some sort of lab experiment.  The Doctor trusts this woman and Clara finds herself feeling the same.

She places some sort of cast provided by the Tardis on his arm and Leo, now free of the pain, hops out of his seat.  The Doctor rushes forward and wraps his arms around his son, lifting him and spinning him around.  “How about we go see some stars.”  Leo nods eagerly.  “Where should we go?”

“The loud one,” their son replies.

“Centaurus?”

“Yes, that one.”

“Alright, Centaurus it is.”

Clara looks at their guests.  “Will you be joining us?” she asks Martha.

A tentative smile forms on her lips as she looks back at her husband.  “What do you think?”

“See a little space?”  Clara can see the excitement on Mickeys’ face.  “Let’s do it.”

They make their way through the corridors of Clara’s Tardis which emits a constant orange glow like sunset in autumn.  Ashildr is waiting for them in the console room, standing up from her seat near the bottom of the stairs when she sees them.  The walls of the room are lined with trees with leaves like the one that brought her parents together, and the walls of the upper level are filled with floor-to-ceiling bookcases in between the tree trunks.  The trees are currently in bloom, dropping flower petals onto the floor.   Neither Clara nor Ashildr have ever cleaned any of these petals up; Clara suspects the Tardis uses them for something, like compost.

Leo runs down the stairs and Ashildr hugs him briefly before pulling back to look him in the eye.  “All patched up?”

“Yep!” he responds.  “We’re going on an adventure!”

“An adventure?” Ashildr throws the question over his shoulder to Clara, her eyebrow raising.

“A non-eventful one,” Clara tells her.  She steps down the stairs to the console and puts in the coordinates, throwing them into flight.  When she turns around she finds the Doctor watching her with admiration.  It pulls her to him; no matter what she does she will always be drawn to him.

She rests her head on his chest and feels his arms softly wrap around her.  She wonders for a moment if they’re being rude to everyone else in the room, but she can’t bring herself to back away from him for the duration of their time in the vortex.  Their moments together are always too brief.

At the tell-tale sounds of the Tardis landing, they separate.  Ashildr looks at the screen to check their location.  Even before her friend gives her the nod of confirmation, she knows they’ve landed exactly where she intended for them to be.  Her Tardis doesn’t have any navigational problems.  They found out the hard way that their Tardis was in the repair shop because she refuses to turn invisible.  There isn’t anything physically wrong with her systems, she just doesn’t ever want to enter stealth mode.  They are stuck with a visible, and very obvious American Diner wherever they go.

She opens the door, walking into the interior of the diner.  The view through the windows is incredible, the constellation of Centaurus just outside the door.  Leo runs past her, the Doctor right behind him, and the two of them end up sitting side by side, their legs hanging out the doorway as they stare out at the sight before them.

As Ashildr passes her, Clara bumps her shoulder, and the two of them head behind the counter to make hot chocolate for everyone.  Martha slides onto a stool at the bar, her expression one of both caution and curiosity.  “What is it?” Clara decides to ask her, cutting the silence.

“You and the Doctor,” she says carefully.  “How did you two meet?”

Clara lets out a gust of air that her lungs don’t even really need.  “Oh, well, it’s a bit complicated.  In a way, we’ve always known each other.”

***

_Three Years Old_

They picked the town because it was out of the way.  A little countryside town in Scotland that saw very little traffic; the kind of place unlikely to find trouble or adventure.  The perfect place to raise Leo in relative safety.  A place they would never run into anyone who knew Clara from when she was alive.

She landed her Tardis at the end of the main road.  By the end of the day they were open for business as a brand new diner complete with an altered perception filter so that the townspeople could see the diner but wouldn’t question where it came from or for how long it had been there.

Clara couldn’t even pronounce the town’s name, but she liked there.  Something about it just felt safe.  But anyone could tell from her or Ashildr’s accents that they weren’t from anywhere nearby and it didn’t take long for people to start asking questions about the two strange women and the little boy they always appeared with.

“And I am Me, his aunt.”  Clara overheard the conversation at the bar and groaned, stepping out from the kitchen to see what appeared to be a middle-aged man and woman – likely married, judging by the rings on their fingers.

The customer stared at her companion in confusion.  “Wait, what was your name?”

Clara grabbed the other woman’s arm and pulled her a couple steps away from the stranger.  “We talked about this.  You can’t just call yourself ‘Me.’”

“Why not?  I have done so for billions of years without a problem, I don’t know why I should change that now.”

“Because, we are _undercover._ We are trying to do everything we can to avoid attracting attention, and calling yourself ‘Me’ is exactly the kind of thing that attracts attention.”  She glanced back at the customer, speaking just loudly enough for him to hear.  “Her name is Ashildr.”

Ashildr looked over her shoulder.  “No, it’s Me,” she stubbornly corrected.

“Ashildr is the name she was _born with,_ even if she doesn’t remember it.”

“Like you even remember your own birth.”

“That’s not the point.”

The man continued to stare at them, not sure what to make of the strange conversation before him.  His wife, who had remained silent so far, chose that moment to change the topic.  “Will your son be attending the school here?”

Clara nodded.  “Yes, of course.  When he’s old enough.”

Ashildr looked up at her.  “Oh, so now you’re sending your son to the local school just because someone asked?  Just so you don’t _attract attention?”_

“Yes.  Besides, I want him to have a relatively normal childhood.  He should make friends and stuff.”

That night, after closing up, they sat across a table from each other.  “Okay,” Ashildr said.  “If we’re really going to do this – this whole undercover thing – we need to get everything straight.”

“Right,” Clara agreed.  “Figure out our whole story.  Make it airtight, no one would question the truth in it.  So obviously, after a while we’ll have to move or we’ll have to stop appearing in public.  Something like that.”

Ashildr tilted her head to one side, studying her friend.  “True, but I wasn’t thinking so far ahead.  We’ve only just arrived and there are far more pleasant details to work out.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, I don’t know.  If Leo’s going to attend school here though, he’s going to need a full name.”

Clara’s eyebrows shot up.  “Of course, I can’t believe I hadn’t even thought of that.  Well, it can’t exactly be Oswald.”

“And as far as I know, the Doctor doesn’t have a last name.”

“He has aliases.  Smith could work but ‘Leo Smith’ doesn’t really sound like the name I want to give my son.  And his last name is definitely not going to be ‘Disco,’” she added with a grimace.

“So a brand new name, then.”  The two women sat in thoughtful silence before Ashildr spoke again.  “I have an idea – ‘Fitz’ it means ‘son of.’”

Clara considered the name in her head.  Her son.  Son of the Doctor.  Son of the Hybrid.  _Leo Fitz._ Son of a constellation.  “It’s perfect.”

***

In just a few minutes he’ll be in his Tardis, piloting her to a small town in Scotland where he’ll get to be with his family for a little while.  It’s been too long since he last saw them.  He thought first he’d pick up coffee, a small reminder of when he’d first regenerated into this form, the form that would never have existed without Clara, the form that saw her face before all others.  “The Doctor" he told the barista his name after ordering the drinks.

"I knew there was something familiar about you," a voice from behind him said in a mix of knowing and disbelief. He spun around to see a woman with white hair. He knew he'd seen her before, but he couldn't remember from where. "But you look different, how does that work?"

He felt for a moment something similar to nausea, but then the moment passed as he thought of Emma Grayling and her like. Some humans just had a way of sensing these things. "We've met before?"

"Yes, it was only a few years ago, but you were much younger then, and naked."

"Naked?" He tried to remember when that may have happened when it dawned on him. "You're Clara's grandmother."

"Was," she corrected. "I was her grandmother."

He recognizes the pain in her voice. It doesn't matter that he knows Clara’s out there, or how many times he is fortunate to still see her face, the pain of losing her will never go away completely. It's then that he makes a decision. "About that - Clara, I mean. She's not dead, not really." He watches the way hope fills her face and continues. "She will die someday and you will bury her, but for now she is out there," he waves his hand in a general gesture. "Traveling for as long as she likes before going to her death." _Which is never, I hope._

"Can I see her?"

His mouth twitches as he thinks. It really isn't a good idea, Clara is supposed to be dead and his attempt at comforting the woman could cost the universe dearly. But then he remembers his son at home with Clara.  He hasn’t seen either of them in what he thinks is about three months and no matter how necessary the separation is for the universe, it’s a constant ache.  He remembers taking Susan from her home for her own safety and decides he doesn’t want to deprive another of his loved ones their family.  “Yes, but there are things I have to tell you first.  You have a great-grandson.  He’s… he’s my son and I visit when I can, but Clara and I can’t be together for reasons that are too complicated and too painful for me to explain to you in a busy cafe.  But even if I can’t be that much a part of her life, I do my best to be a part of his.  And I think he deserves his great-grandmother.”

“So you’ll take me to her?”

“Yes.”

***

_Ten Years Old_

Leo sits on a stool, drinking his hot chocolate, when the door opens and two people step in.  The view through the window is New York, 1942, so he thinks nothing of the couple as they walk up to the bar to presumably order food.

“Okay, he’s definitely not what I was expecting,” the man states in an English accent.

“Shh,” the woman beside him says.  “Maybe he’s just a customer.  He might even need help.”  And despite her whispering, Leo recognizes her accent as Scottish.  “Hey,” she says as way of addressing him, and he looks up to see bright red hair.  “Is your mother around?”

“Mum!” he shouts and in a second his mother comes out from the kitchen and spots the couple there.

She puts on a smile reserved especially for customers.  “What would you like?” she asks as she pulls out a notepad to write their order.

The couple gape at her, confused for some reason.  “Yep, this definitely not what I was expecting,” the man repeats.

The woman puts her hand on his chest as if to silence him.  “What are you running here?  Is he even a child?”  Her tone is aggressive as she points to Leo like an accusation.

“Um,” his mother replies.  “Of course he’s a child.  What did you think he was, a clocktower?”

“Actually, I was thinking he might be an alien.”

Leo finds himself worried by the stranger’s comment and slips off his stool, slowly making his way behind the counter to his mother.  “I’m not an alien,” he tells the woman.  And he isn’t, not really, he may have been born in space but he’s lived his whole life on Earth with only brief vacations elsewhere.

“Well, there’s definitely something going on here,” the man backs up his companion’s accusations.  “Because this diner can’t possibly exist, not in 1942.”

Leo knows his mother works it out just as he does, from the way she squeezes his shoulder.  They’re time travelers too.  “And what makes you say that?” his mother asks them.

“Because this style won’t be popular for another ten years at least.”

“And more than that,” the woman adds.  “We’ve been in a diner exactly like this one in 2011 in the state of Utah.”

“Isn’t that something,” his mum says.  “I haven’t been to Utah.  Yet.”

“Yet?” the woman asks.  “So if you’re not aliens – and I’m not saying we believe you – but if you aren’t then you must have time-travelers.”

“We have a winner!” his mum congratulates the pair sarcastically.

“And you managed to transport an entire diner?” the man points out, confused.

His mum just smiles and holds out her hand.  “I’m Clara.”

The woman shakes her hand, suspicion still in her eyes.  “Amy.  And this is my husband Rory.”

“You mentioned 2011?” his mother queries.  “So are you from the 21st century, then?”

Rory nods.  “That would be it.”

“How did you end up here?”

Amy’s face goes dark for a moment.  “Weeping angels.”

“Oh,” his mother grimaces.  “I ran into a few of those on Trenzalore.  Horrible.”

“Wait, Trenzalore?” Rory wonders aloud.  “We’ve heard of it, haven’t we?”

Amy nods and then turns to face his mum again.  “We have heard of it.  Do you know the Doctor?”

Leo sees his mother go stiff at the mention of that name, but it’s he who answers.  “You know my father?”

“Leo!” his mother scolds him.  “You can’t just go around saying things like that.”

He looks back at the couple, intending to apologize and maybe backtrack on his comment, but the two of them just stand there gaping at him.  “I mean,” Amy starts.  “I figured the Doctor had children at some point, but I never expected…” her voice drifts off and Leo isn’t sure how she meant to end that sentence.

“Wait,” his mother says, silencing any voices that may have been about to speak.  “I knew you two looked familiar.  The Dalek Asylum, right?”

“Um, yes…” Rory answers.  “But I definitely don’t remember seeing you there.”

“Well, of course – you didn’t see me, you only ever heard my voice.”

“Oswin?” and he certainly doesn’t sound sure of his guess.

“Oswin died,” his wife interrupts.  “So I don’t know what you’re playing at.”

And this is how Leo Fitz learns the story of his mother.

“I, uh,” she began.  “The Doctor and I, we’ve known each other a long time.  Since always really; there are times when I wonder if I’ve ever lived a single moment where he wasn’t alive somewhere out there in the universe.  We’re from different species, different planets, different time zones, but I wouldn’t be surprised if somehow we were born at the same moment.  It’s like there’s a string that ties me to him constantly, no matter where he is or what he’s doing.  But that string does exist, in a way, it’s our timestreams.”  She pauses for a moment to make sure the couple are following.  “I saw his timestream once, on Trenzalore, the first time I went there, when the fields were nothing but a memorial of the war.  It won’t be there anymore, I changed events, so unless something else happens the Doctor didn’t die on that planet.  But I saw his timestream, I watched the Great Intelligence enter it to kill him all across his life, in every moment.  I couldn’t let that happen, so I went in as well to save him.  I have lived far more lives than this one, there are echoes of me out there made to protect him.  Oswin was one of them.”

“That still doesn’t explain who you are,” Rory points out.  “Or how you get an entire diner to travel through time.”

“Clara Oswald,” she says.  “I don’t normally tell people my full name, too many chances of damaging time in some way, but my name is Clara Oswald.  I was born on Earth on November 23, 1986 to Ellie and Dave Oswald.  I _died,_ ” she looks down at the bar.  “November 21, 2015.  Killed on a hidden street in London.  But a thing... happened.  The Doctor couldn’t let me die, so he stopped it happening.”  She pushes off the bar, walking to the door and flipping the sign to closed before heading to the back door.  She looks behind her, letting the three of them know they should follow with a look, and they do.  “But my death is a fixed point.”  She pulls open the back door, revealing the console room of the Tardis.  Leo simply follows his mum as she walks up to the console, but Amy and Rory freeze once they enter the room, staring up at the center column, the trees and the bookcases.  “It must happen in order for the universe to survive.  Most of my biological processes are frozen, keeping me alive for much longer than I should be, but one day I will have to go back to that street and face my death.”

“Is this the Tardis?” Amy asks, bewildered.

“It is _a_ Tardis,” his mum corrects.  “It’s _my_ Tardis, I stole it.  After the Doctor stole it, of course.  He has his Tardis and I have mine.”

“And yours looks like a diner,” Rory says, amused.  “That’s actually more ridiculous than his.”

His mum shrugs her shoulders and starts fiddling with controls.  “You’d be surprised what sentient lifeforms are willing to overlook.”

“Let me get this straight,” he continues.  “The Doctor invited us to meet him in Utah in 2011, and when the four of us decided to get lunch at a diner, the diner we went to was actually your Tardis.”

“Except I haven’t been there yet, so thank you for letting me know.”

Amy hops across the floor until she’s standing in his mother’s personal space, staring at her with a deeply inquisitive look.  “But if you’re here, if he saved you, where is the Doctor?”

His mother stops fiddling, jerking her hands away like they’ve been burned and staring down at them.  Leo considers going to her, trying to comfort her against whatever is bothering her, but his own curiosity at the answer freezes him in place.  His parents have always dodged explaining why they’re rarely together.

Instead of answering immediately, she backs her way to the stairs, walking slowly down them like she’s caught in a daze, disappearing to the depths below.  He follows first, leaning over the railing to watch her sit in the maintenance swing.  In a second, Rory is beside him, but Amy continues down the stairs, approaching the silent woman.  Once she reaches her, she just stands there, waiting.

“When the Doctor saved me,” his mother finally says without looking up at any of them.  “He put then entire universe at risk.  It’s complicated, but sometimes love isn’t pure, sometimes it’s intense and terrifying and destructive.”

Amy looks back at Rory, whispering her response, “Of everything you’ve told us so far, that I understand the most.”

Later, Clara offered to take them with her to 2011, a small trip and a chance for them to remember a good time from their own past.  As soon as the Tardis took off, Charlie – an art student they picked up in 2384, and Leo’s aunt come out to the console room, knowing that they were going somewhere.

“No more 1940s New York?” Ashildr asks.

“Not for right now,” his mum answers.  “We’re going to a preset destination, so to speak.  These two,” she indicates the couple.  “Remember our Tardis from their own personal history, so we’re going there to make sure that event happens as it should.”

They arrive a week early, setting up shop.  Just as his mother had said, not a single person wondered how a diner came to be overnight in the middle of the desert.  In fact, they were quite popular with tourists, packed every evening.  And every time a customer asked his mother for her name, she told them “the Doctor.”

It is a sunny afternoon when Rory announces from the front door, “We’re coming!”  He runs behind the counter, grabbing his wife’s hand, and heads for the console room where they will watch via a screen to avoid running into their past selves.  At Ashildr’s assistance that they be extra careful not to damage yet another fixed point, they moved the door to the console room even further back, so no one could accidentally wander in while in search of a bathroom.

Leo watches from his hiding place behind the counter as another, younger Amy and Rory enter the restaurant, followed by a woman with massively curly hair, and a man he knows from photographs to be and earlier regeneration of his father.  They take a seat by the booth, laughing at some joke he didn’t catch, and he watches them with rapt attention, drawn in by the wonderful impossibility of the moment.

His mother should be dead.  The news doesn’t surprise him as much as it should, but he always knew that humans have one heartbeat but his mother has none.  She is an impossibility.  Like him.  Like the moment.  These things that no one thought would ever happen.  He wonders if impossibilities really are all just improbabilities.  How many things were there he thought could never happen but someday will?  He shivers, trying not to think about it, trying not to think about the monsters in his dreams.

The group stay for about an hour before heading off into the early evening.  “Don’t worry,” Rory says, he and Amy walking back into the room, noticing the disappointed look on Leo’s face.  “We’ll be back in a few hours.”

As the sun begins to set the customers trickle down until the diner is empty. Ashildr suggests that they all head to the console room apart from Charlie.  Leo stands next to the counter, not wanting to leave just yet.  They’ve all disappeared from his sight when he finally decides he should head in.  But before he can, he hears the front door open and spins around, spotting his father once more.

“Hello there,” the Doctor says to him like he’s nothing more than a stranger.

“Hey,” Leo manages to respond.

The Doctor looks up at Charlie and at the menu behind him, before turning back to the boy.  “What do you suggest?” he asks.

Leo thinks on it, wondering what the best response is.  “A chocolate milkshake,” he tells his father.  “It’s my favorite.”

“That sounds great,” the Doctor decides.  He pivots on his feet, facing the counter once more.  “I’ll have a chocolate milkshake.”

Charlie nods before turning to Leo.  “You better run on in before your mom gets mad.”

When it’s all done, when the other three return and the four of them leave once more, they depart from Utah, dropping off Amy and Rory on the same day they took them from, before the four of them decide to return to Scotland.

Leo falls asleep that night with his mind full of thoughts of his father and the two strangers who weren’t really strangers.  He wonders what adventures they had and why they were so upset when they returned to the diner.  He wonders if he’ll ever really understand his parents.  But more than anything, he wonders if he’ll ever get to have adventures of his own.

***

_Twelve Years Old_

It’s late at night, a school night no less, but Leo just can’t fall asleep.  He gets out of bed, stumbling through the darkness and into the corridor, letting the Tardis lead him as he simply wanders her halls, not really caring where he ends up.

Eventually though, and he shouldn’t be surprised, he finds his way to the console room.  Despite the Tardis’ infinite space, its labs, its massive library, the console room is always favorite.  It’s a comfortable space, full of old books, the cozy orange glow of autumn, and the constant faint smell of what he’s sure is clove.  And maybe dark chocolate.

He walks over to a large comfy chair and plops into it before he even realizes there is someone else in the room.  Across the platform, in another chair, is his mother.  She stares back at him like she’s watching him from a distance instead of ten feet away.  He lets her, knowing that she’ll speak when she’s ready.

It’s at least a full minute before she does.  “You’re a miracle, you know.  Your father and I, we’ve been so scared.  The prophecy told us we were born to destroy, but here you are, living proof that we could also create.”

“Why do you and dad spend so much time apart?” he asks, hoping she’ll finally answer.

She looks away for a moment, her gaze following the path of a leaf on its slow descent.  “I suppose you had to find out some day.  There’s a prophecy that’s older than the both of us.  It tells of a Hybrid, made of two warrior races, that would one day unravel the web of time, destroy a billion billion hearts to heal its own, and stand in the ruins of Gallifrey.  The prophecy isn’t very clear, but your aunt Ashildr worked out that it referred to your father and me.  He and I are so much alike.  We’ve known each other since we were children, I immersed myself in his timestream, and he put himself through… through _hell_ for four and a half billion years just to save me from my own death.  We were everything that should never have happened, but happened anyway.  Like our very souls refused to ever be apart from one another.  This, now, it isn’t so different from before.  I’ve watched over him his entire life and he has watched me.  We don’t like being apart, but we can manage, as long as we know that there is a possibility that we’ll see each other again.  As long as we’re both still in the universe.

“I know you don’t like to think that your parents will die one day, I never liked thinking about it.  But I am dead, out there in the year 2015.  That is the date of my death, and it must always be the date of my death.  If your father and I decided to be together, to give up on our separation, not only would he never let me return to that street, I don’t think I’d have the strength to walk away.”

***

_Fifteen Years Old_

Leo sits in a booth, his back to the door as he does his homework.  He hears the front door open behind him but pays no attention to it.

“Good afternoon,” his mother greets the person.  “Do you know what you want to order or would you like a minute?”

“Actually, Ms. Fitz, I’m here to speak with you and your son.”

No one ever calls his mother ‘Ms. Fitz’ which mean that this person is from out of town and that they are here because of him.  The name Fitz is only attached to him.  A woman stands at the counter, facing his mother, but she hears him turning in the booth and meets his eye.  “What about?” his mother asks, her voice dropping an octave as she prepares to defend them against whatever this stranger has brought into their home.

“My name is Agent Weaver, I’m the head of the science and technology division at S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy.  We would like to extend an offer to your son to attend our school.”

“What interest do you have in my son?”

“S.H.I.E.L.D. has been watching him for a while now, ever since he brought that specific science experiment to school.”  He tries to force the grin from his face, remembering the experiment in question that nearly got him expelled.  She continues, “S.H.I.E.L.D. is an international organization whose goal is to protect the world from threats that governments and military aren’t prepared to deal with.  Your son is brilliant, and we think he could be a big part of that.”

Leo can tell his mother is on the verge of throwing the woman out, but he knows this is his chance.  There is something he is meant to do, something out there in the universe, and he knows that he needs to go off on an adventure of his own, without his parents and Ashildr there to always keep him safe.

He’d seen stars, distant planets, the future, the past, but he’d never really seen inside himself.  The improbable child of two people who loved each other so much they were destined to unravel the web of time, two people who defied death to be together.  That is their story, but now he wants a story of his own.  “Mum, I think we should at least listen to what she has to say.”

***

_Seconds Old_

“We have a son, Clara,” the Doctor tells her, nearly weeping.

He hands her the small, crying infant in bad need of washing and she clutches their son to her chest, staring down at him through her tears.  She opens her mouth to speak, but can’t.  The Doctor stretches out on the bed next to her, leaning gently into her shoulder to share her view.  “Aren’t you going to say something?” he teases.

She shakes her head at first, not sure if she could ever find the words to do the moment justice.  When a few words actually come to mind, she almost shakes her head again at the silliness of it all, but finally she lets them out.  “A thing of beauty is a joy forever,” she recites.  And she knows, looking down at the child in her arms, with the love of her long, impossible life pressing against her side, that this moment will always bring her joy.

The Doctor, his face brushing against hers, catches the thought and silently agrees.

**Author's Note:**

> The title of the fic and the quote Clara recites during Leo's birth is the opening to "Endymion" by John Keats. "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever;/its loveliness increases; it will never/pass into nothingness; but will keep/a bower quiet for us, and a sleep/full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet/breathing." I figure since Clara is an English teacher who canonically likes Jane Austen, a contemporary of Keats, she would easily be familiar with this poem.  
> The very real constellation Centaurus with its white dwarf that emits the sound of a giant gong has been mentioned in my fic Time to Turn it Over as well.  
> I really wanted to write a lot more of Martha and Mickey, and to show Clara's grandmother visiting them frequently, but this fic was getting pretty long so I guess there will just have to be a third one.  
> Charlie is the name I decided to give to the waiter we see in The Impossible Astronaut.


End file.
